


Heartbreak (Keep on Breathing)

by Krasimer



Series: Stay In Your Court (Bring You Home) [3]
Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chris Feels, Cute, Fluff, Human After All, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I will keep this ship floating even if I have to sail it alone, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Sweet, walkur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7144997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers the man from before the Asylum.</p><p>He remembers the creature from inside the Asylum.</p><p>Mostly, Miles is really tired of having to be alone. He wants his best friend back, he wants his partner back, he wants his lover back. He is just selfish enough to hope for all three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartbreak (Keep on Breathing)

The morning routine of Miles Upshur had been, for the too long time of missing his boyfriend, rough and unsteady.

Wake up, punch the pillow and flop face-first back into it, groan and grumble until it felt like enough whining. Once that was done with, flip over onto his back and grab the glass of water he kept by the bed. Gulping half of it down immediately, he'd lie there for another few minutes, then whistle for Panda.

The excitable dog that she was, she'd come running into the room and bounce up onto the bed. 

('It's just an extended deployment,' he told himself. 'Nothing to worry about.'

As if that could calm the fears in his head.)

Depending on her mood that day, Panda would either spend a few minutes sniffing around the bed for signs of her original owner or she'd jump halfway onto his chest and lick his face. Miles would pet her for a bit, then sit up and set his glass back down, scratching behind her ears. Once upright, he would sigh and stand, stretching until his back popped, then pull on whatever clothing was immediately on hand and take Panda for a walk.

If it were winter, there was the addition of three extra layers of clothing.

Coming back inside meant food and coffee for him and a treat for Panda. If she behaved he would give her two, pretending the entire time that he was hiding the action from someone.

(Alright, so he might be a little crazy. Everyone was, no big deal.)

Going to work left a hollow feeling in his chest, but at least his boss was fine with him bringing Panda with him. The fear of missing a phone call always stayed in the back of his mind.

What if he missed the one clue to where Chris Walker had disappeared?

 

Miles Upshur's morning routine once Chris Walker came home was different.

In the morning, with small rays of light coming in through the windows and hitting his current bed of the couch, he'd smell coffee and food when he woke up. In the other room was Chris, wandering around the kitchen and busying his hands with re-learning his own home. He was quiet, quieter than Miles remembered him being, but it made sense. In a place like Mount Massive, silence often meant survival.

With a soft groan, Miles sat up and looked over the back of the couch and into the kitchen. 

Chris was staring out the window above the sink, his eyes locked onto something in the distance. "Good morning," his voice was like an old door hinge, rusty and almost painful from not being used. The doctors had said it might get better, but only if he took it easy.

Blinking slowly, Miles nodded, "Morning."

"...You didn't sleep well." Chris's eyes were studying him, scanning over every inch of him that they could see. The cloudy cataracts were still sort of there, wisps of grey over the color of his eyes, and the nose prosthetic blended a little strangely with the edges of the scars, but for the most part, he was someone Miles recognized. What made it even better was the fact that Miles recognized the man he knew from before the asylum. "I told you, you can sleep on the bed,"

"Not a fuckin' chance," Miles grumbled, grabbing a mug from the cabinet and pouring coffee into it. "They had you on the shittiest beds in the world in that place and it has been a really long time since you had anything soft and comfy. Not making you give that up big guy," he practically shoved the coffee up his nose to smell it, his eyes closing. "Besides, California King mattress versus couch that barely fits my six-foot-two ass? Your legs would be hanging off one side or your head would."

He took a careful slurp of the caffeine, ignoring the slightly too hot temperature. "Deal with it."

"Your neck is angled slightly to one side like your muscles are all locked up, you're walking slowly and-" Chris gestured to the couch, "-I know for a fact that that couch is not comfortable to sleep on."

A soft panting noise drew their attention down, Miles laughing. 

Panda sat on the floor between them, her snout pressed against Chris's thigh and her butt parked on Miles' feet. Looking back up, Miles froze.  
Instead of the distance that had been between then before, Chris had come in close enough for Miles to feel his breath on his face, the heat of his body against his own. After a moment of staring, both of them backed away.

"Sorry," Chris said softly. 

Miles shook his head. "I think Panda wants a walk, and I think I want to talk to you about some stuff."

Chris nodded, then stepped away some more, holding his hand out for Panda to sniff and follow. "Do you want to come with us? I don't know if I-" he went quiet again, focusing somewhere on the wall behind Miles' head. Panda whined, running back to Miles, back to Chris, repetitive lines back and forth between the two men as she kept whining.

"Yeah," Miles turned to the cupboard again, digging out a travel mug and dumping his coffee into it. "Just let me get dressed."

He skirted around the two of them, pausing for a moment to pat Panda's head before heading into the bedroom. He'd spent a long time watching over her on his own and they had both spent that long time missing Chris together. 

The man was home now.

It almost made Miles feel faint when he thought about it. They were living together, Chris was a PTSD survivor and a Veteran and a goddamned survivor in general. The last thing Miles had heard before Chris had disappeared in the first place had been about having to stop in at the asylum to talk to a therapist or something. Some person that was only available there and was the only person he could talk to about anything that would be covered by his insurance.

Looking back on it, Miles could practically hear the bullshit lining the words.

He shrugged his thoughts away, forcing himself to grab a set of clothing from the wardrobe. With a quick glance at the barely-there line that separated his clothes from Chris's, he slammed the drawer shut and stumbled to the bathroom.

Chris was right: his steps were slow and his neck hurt like someone had taken a hammer to it during the night.

Fuck.

 

The air was a freezing blast to their faces when they stepped outside and Panda could not have been happier.

Her tongue lolling out of her mouth as she bounced around on the end of her leash made Miles laugh. "Hey," he managed through fits and bursts, "At least you're strong enough to stay upright with her tugging on the end of your arm?"

"Hm," Chris grunted, a small smile on his face as he watched the border collie. His eyes rolled up to the sky, focused on a cloud for a moment. "It's going to snow soon." he frowned, then looked back down to where Panda had come back over to him, nudging her nose against his hand and sniffing at his pocket. "We've got supplies for cold weather?"

"Yeah," Miles pulled a tennis ball out of his pocket before he stepped ahead a bit and opened the gate to the dog park. He had it on good authority that Chris had chosen his apartment partially because of the proximity of the park. "We've got plenty of stuff, including a couple of camp stoves. I remembered-" he swallowed nervously, trying not to think about Chris's meticulous preparation and lectures about being so. "- I remembered to gather stuff. Not a complete idiot."

Chris's eyes slid to him, his brow furrowing. "Not an idiot."

It was said matter-of-factly and it made Miles a little sad inside to hear it. The words sounded like a placation, like an echo of something that once would have been said. He trudged through the grass to the bench closest to the exit. Plopping down onto it, he held out the tennis ball, waving it so that Panda could see it. When Chris kneeled down and unclipped her from her leash, she took off towards Miles. 

He didn't give her a chance to get too close before he was launching the ball through the air for her. Her legs were a blur as she went rampaging after it and he was reminded of nothing but her owner.

Chris sat down on the bench, his body heat seeping through the air and almost slamming into Miles. He'd always been warm, had always been a furnace of a human, but the things done to him seemed to have made it worse. "I always thought," he began, his gravelly voice harsh in the cold air. "That I'd end up living with you."

Oh.

It was going to be that kind of day.

"Yeah?" Miles' voice was quiet, letting the larger man talk with just a prompting word from him.

"I had plans, I've had plans and I- I had plans. Plans," Chris's eyebrows still hadn't grown back all the way and it was seeming like they never would. It was silly, but it was something Miles had to think was another thing Murkoff had ruined. "Plans including you. And- And a house. It wasn't supposed to be...This."

He gestured at himself and Miles' heart broke just a little more.

"I was going to come home and figure some things out with you," he continued, not even waiting for Miles to prompt him. "You and Panda and I were- I-If you'd agreed to it, it would have been...Good."

Nudging Chris's knee with his own, Miles shook his head. "We've talked about this before. Nothing expected. I'm still offering to move out if you want your space back."

"I don't!"

Chris had gone stiff, his hands fisted on his knees and an almost inhuman snarl shaping his scarred mouth. 

"Hey," Miles put a careful hand on his arm. "It's okay," he floundered. "Okay, we both know that's a crock of shit. Nothing about what happened is okay, but we're figuring it out together. If you didn't get the message before this, I'm just gonna fucking repeat it until you do." he paused, then nodded. "You killed that Traeger asshole to keep my dumb-ass alive, we're in this shit for the long-haul, got it?"

Chris nodded, his chest heaving slightly.

"Now, can you find the right words to explain what you're thinking? I've got time." 

As if to demonstrate, Miles curled himself onto the bench until he was sitting cross-legged and leaning on his knees. 

"...I had things planned," Chris began again, swallowing roughly. His frown made Miles want to hold onto him until the bad memories and the damage went away. "And there was a...There was something important."

"It's okay big guy, just remember what the therapist said. Think it through," Miles patted carefully at his hand, watching the scarred fingers uncurl beneath his own. "Separate out Then, Before and Now. Now is sitting on a bench in the dog park you always take Panda to. Before is doing sort of the same but without the fuckery the jackasses at Murkoff pulled on you. Then is the Dark Place in your nightmares and it can get fucked on it's way to hell."

Chris snorted, his entire body curling with the amusement in his eyes.

"Do that for me?" Miles watched their fingers slip into a hold and fought against the instinctual want to slide their hands together and slide himself into Chris's lap and just press against him until everything and anything else felt like a memory and nothing more.

In some ways, he disgusted himself.

Chris swallowed, his laughter dying down. "I wanted to ask you before. There was a small box and I wanted to ask you and everything went to hell before I could get home and ask the question."

And now Miles felt his own face falling.

There had been a mention about rearranging some things, and Chris had said there was something important and he was waiting until he was home to talk about it. 

He felt his chest almost compress under the purely selfish feeling of wanting something so badly. He hadn't been one for tying himself down before, that was part of the perks of his job after all. Anywhere he could think to go, he'd be there at some point or another. His job had taken him halfway across the entire world and-

And if he had been given the choice before, he would have immediately dropped it for staying with Chris.

If the man gave any hint of wanting anything, Miles would give up everything he had to try and make it happen. There were moments when he realized he was in deep, he thought, and this had to be one of them. 

"...The box was in my closet." Chris said quietly, turning to meet Miles' eyes. "And I had to measure your finger when you were asleep."

Fuck, that's not playing fair.

"You-" Miles swallowed nothing but air, tried to get his brain to work with him. "You wanted..."

"I think I still do," Chris's voice was nearly a subsonic rumble, a thrum of sound Miles could feel in his chest. "Before and- And now, I still..." he frowned, then put a still-trembling hand on Miles' chin, drawing him in for a moment, allowing him time to back away before he pressed their lips together. 

Both of them had chapped lips and the cold air wasn't making anything about that better, but good fucking god it was the best thing. Chris was almost too hot, his skin burning to the touch but Miles could feel himself responding to it. 

Maybe he'd been the one to leave his sanity in the pit that had been called Mount Massive.

"Wait," he muttered, his mouth a hair's width away from Chris's. "Trying to do right here, not..."

"Shh," Chris grumbled. 

"You're still dealing, it's not-"

"Healing just fine, missed you so much, can't-"

"We shouldn't be doing this, what if it hurts you, I-"

"-sleep alone anymore, hurts me more than anything else,"

"-don't want to be the reason you have a breakdown, don't want to be anything but good-"

"You are," Chris swiped a thumb across Miles' bottom lip. "You are everything good."

He frowned for a moment, then nodded. "Definitely good. Saved me, stayed with me. Not quite the same as before, but you still stayed with me. Didn't expect anything for it, just stayed."

"Yeah," Miles followed his hand when he pulled it away, almost purring when Chris's palm laid out across his cheek. He nuzzled into it, his eyes closing. "Needed to make sure you were okay. You're not just," one eye opened. "You're not just special, alright? You're kind of my best friend and I fucking missed having my best friend around."

Chris nodded, a grin stretching his mouth as he leaned forward again. For a moment, he had to chase after Miles' lips but he got there in the end. The smaller man's ass was dragged across the bench as Chris pulled him into his lap, reveling in the feel of their bodies next to each other again. 

A bark of excitement dragged them out of their own heads.

Panda sat on the ground, the tennis ball between her feet, her head cocked to one side as if asking them if they were ever going to pay attention to her again.

Pressing his lips together, Miles hid his face in Chris's neck, hands clenched in the fabric of his sweatshirt. "Well, your dog-ter says we should be doing something else right now."

"...Puns," Chris rolled his eyes, standing up and keeping Miles curled in the crook of one elbow. "Forgot about those."

He nudged his chin against Miles' forehead.

**Author's Note:**

> I will sail this ship until the world ends, even if I am the only one sailing. 
> 
> Tell me what you thought in the comments if you feel so inclined. I'll just be over here in the Walkur corner, wondering how the hell I came to be a domesticAU writer for them.


End file.
